I came across an article recently outlining the nature and benefits of cognitive behavioural therapy. That’s a treatment of mental illness which encourages people to look at their negative perception of things and try to work to develop more rational, positive attitudes. It doesn’t involve medication and it’s said to be surprisingly effective.
I’m working on it myself with regard to world leaders. If I view their actions positively, I’ll concentrate on the fact that Cop 26 was organised, that thousands of delegates attended, that they are addressing the existential threat of the climate crisis. This might be hard when they finally tell us what they will do to stem the planet’s decline (this is one occasion on which the idea of compromise is decidedly unpromising) but I’ll try to stay as positive as possible.
Even before that, however, there’s the problem of the gathering itself. Hundreds of delegations flew into the city via private jets, one of the most damaging modes of transport, seemingly undermining the very message of the conference before it even began.
Boris Johnson, you’ll remember, made a rousing opening speech in which he emphasised how close we are to global disaster. He then flew back to London in a private jet, rather than make the four-hour train journey.
Joe Biden arrived in the presidential plane, was escorted to the conference centre by at least half-a-dozen very very large and gas-guzzling limos. When he’s said his bit, he’ll be escorted again to his plane, and jet back across the Atlantic.
LBC’s Nick Ferrari gave environment minister George Eustice a bit of a roasting on this topic. “But Mr Eustice – they [world leaders] seek to lecture us – they lecture the good people of Camborne and Redruth as they arrive in convoys of 22 cars, private jets which are gobbling out goodness knows how much CO2 emissions – and they lecture us. It’s ludicrous – isn’t it?”
Eustice made with some blah-blah-blah about how good it was to see world cooperation at the conference but he didn’t address the basic absurdity of the huge amount of pollution incurred in getting to Glasgow and getting home from a conference aiming to find ways to cut CO2 emissions.
You could argue a case for this kind of mass pollution, but you’d need to adopt a strong mentality of cognitive behavioural therapy to stop yourself thinking of them as being bloody hypocrites, wouldn’t you?
Comments are closed.